The Deer Hunter is not run of the mill. It is made with great seriousness and dedication…. So much about The Deer Hunter is impressive: it is said that strong men are carried, nightly, weeping from the cinema, to say nothing (I suppose) of weak women.

I can see how people are invited to be moved, but without diminishing my admiration for the film's skills … or making itself dislikeable, the film failed to move me. There is something about it—a solemnity, a lack of humour, a lack of warmth, a deviousness even, or, more fairly, a lack of self-awareness—that seems to result in not telling us as much of the truth about human beings as it purports to.

What it is pretending to tell us is that a code of values exists, embracing courage, resourcefulness, strength, ruthlessness even, in the interests of survival, and that this...